


Something Broken About This

by JacarandaBanyan



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ballroom Dancing, Bingo, Bucky and Steve are also mentioned, Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, F/M, Prompt Fic, Tony Stark Bingo 2019, Unhealthy Relationships, but they're offscreen the whole time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 02:26:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18085658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JacarandaBanyan/pseuds/JacarandaBanyan
Summary: Every day Tony and Natasha lie to each other, and it's dragging down their relationship. Can they open up to each other and bring a little honesty into their day-to-day lives, or have they both become too comfortable with lying and hiding to really let another person in?





	Something Broken About This

**Author's Note:**

> For Tony Stark Bingo, Square T1- A Day In The Life
> 
> Thank you so much to Faustess for betaing this for me!

Natasha already knew how she was going to lie to her boyfriend this morning. He was going to come ambling into the kitchen in a few minutes, still sleep-slow and sad that she never came to bed last night. He would want to ask about it right off the bat, but she knew Tony, and Tony would greet her with a light quip or a bleary, sleepy stare, and start the coffee maker first. He probably knew he wasn’t fooling her, probably knew that she could see how much he wanted to know where she was when she said she’d be there last night, but he would try and mask it anyway. 

The only thing she didn’t know was how to follow it up. Should she aim for something domestic to soothe any lingering hurt? Maybe she could suggest they make breakfast together. Breakfast foods tend to be simple to make, and with the two of them working together they can probably whip up quite the spread. Being in the kitchen working together would naturally lend itself to easy banter, to soft, comfortable looks and perhaps a little kissing. A little flour in the hair, a little batter on the cheek- it would be simple to set in motion. 

The image made her heart feel like a bright, blooming daffodil. She squashed the feeling on instinct.

Tony was a busy man with many projects, and she didn’t know for sure that he had even stayed in bed once it became clear she wasn’t going to show up. Time was a nebulous concept for him, what with his insomnia and his triple life as celebrity, superhero and groundbreaking scientist. He only pretended that his body released the appropriate chemicals when the clock’s hands were in the appropriate positions to appease others, and he couldn’t always be bothered to even pretend. Perhaps he’d eaten breakfast at two in the morning, and wasn’t interested, or perhaps breakfast wasn’t a distinct meal for him. 

She was pretty sure he’d slept, though. Tony was a sucker for hope. He’d wait all night for her, hoping. Like an amateur. 

Perhaps sex? Tony loved sex. Tony had a very public history of being amenable to sex distractions. 

That idea made her lungs feel like they were turning to stiff, unmoving metal, and she had to take three deep, steady breaths just to prove she could. No, she shouldn’t use sex to get what she wanted from Tony. It was bad enough that she did that on missions all the time, bad enough that Tony probably expected her to try something like that on him. They were in a relationship; sex was supposed to be more than just a weapon or a tool. 

Perhaps she could just compound the lie and fake a call from Steve or Clint. Rolled right up with the lie about where she’d been, it would be like it was all one lie instead of two distinct lies. 

The elevator dinged. Her time was up. 

Tony wandered out of the elevator, hair mussed up and soft flannel pajama pants riding low on his hips. His half-open eyes surveyed the kitchen. When they landed on her, his face brightened for a second, then almost immediately dimmed again. He staggered over to the counter where the mess of tubes and flashing lights that he called a coffee maker (and she called the Infernal Contraption) dutifully opened to produce a mug filled with steaming hot coffee. Jarvis ran the machine, since Natasha was fairly certain he was the only one who  _ could _ run it. That abomination was not meant for human minds. 

The backs of his pant legs caught under his heels as he shuffled over to her, hands wrapped protectively around the mug. She frowned. The mug itself should still be too hot to comfortably hold. The one time she’d asked Jarvis to make Tony’s coffee for her so she could bring it to him in bed, she’d burned her fingertips trying to take it right out of the Infernal Contraption. Tony didn’t even seem to notice the heat. Her mind flashed to all the times she’d seen him working in the lab without proper protection for his skin. Nerve damage, perhaps? Could he just not feel the heat as intensely as someone who hadn’t been born with their hands already grasping for the welding torch? Was he just used to the heat after hundreds of mornings just like this? 

“Morning,” he mumbled into his coffee. “You didn’t come to bed last night.”

“I know,” she said. “I got a call from an old acquaintance on the way back. She’d heard something about one of the Hydra agents we’d been tracking. Time was of the essence.” 

She didn’t give a name, or a place, or any detail beyond the most bare bones of a mission summary. She didn’t say that this old acquaintance was a fruit seller without connections to the intelligence community who worked at a neighborhood market where Natasha liked to buy certain Russian foods that were hard to obtain in general supermarkets, or that the Hydra agent they’d been tracking was the Winter Soldier, or that time was of the essence because Steve said it was, not due to any actual hurry. 

It was a lie, and it was a horrible lie to tell. Tony would never look into it; he trusted her to take her job seriously. She, Steve, and Sam hunted down people and bases; Tony hunted down files and data dumps and strange, sickening technology. She and Steve intentionally kept him out of the loop, and this lie was just a continuation of that long strand of half-truths and deceptions. She justified it to herself by remembering how Steve looked at his long-lost friend and lover, and remembering how it had felt to claw her way out of the Red Room’s clutches. 

Wherever Tony went, he drew attention. The last thing they needed on their pursuit of both Barnes and his tormentors was attention. 

She could see in his eyes that he didn’t believe her. He didn’t have anything concrete, just a subconscious knowledge that this was not how she looked when she was telling the truth, so he didn’t say anything. The perfectly serious and normal tone of her voice wasn’t enough of a clue to call out, neither was her untwitching lip. But it was there between them. One more lie on the heap. 

“What do you have planned for the day?” she asked, pushing the conversation past the lie, trying in vain to leave it behind them. 

He tried to let her. 

“I’ve got some of those files you brought still to go through, so I’ll probably do some of that. Steve brought back some Chitauri crap from his last game of Hydra Whack-A-Mole, so I’ll have to deal with getting that safely stored, if nothing else. Wouldn’t want any unscrupulous characters helping themselves, and I’d prefer to know what definitely will explode and what only might explode. Between that and the new solar panels I’m supposed to hand in the design for by Wednesday, I’ll probably be in the lab until this evening.”

He waggled his eyebrows at her comically. 

“Have you picked out a dress for tonight?” 

She laughed, and offered him a piece of toast. 

“No, I thought I’d let you decide. You’re last dress worked like a charm, after all.” The dress had been riddled with secret sheathes and had light body armor for an underlayer instead of silk. Tony had promised her that the blood would come out by itself, that he’d designed it that way with her particular lifestyle in mind, and that she didn’t need to hand clean it, but she was already impatient to wear it again. 

“I’ll have Jarvis send you something, then,” he said. “Hey J, do we have anything good in the test wardrobe?”

“The black one with the red lace is ready for field testing, Sir.”

“Excellent, have it sent to Nat’s room.”

And it was almost like the lie had never been uttered. 

* * *

The venue was lovely, of course. Tall ceilings, gracious servers in crisp black and white uniforms, glasses that sparkled in the chandelier light. Tony immediately wanted to turn around and go home. But a certain Mr. Hannonson was on the guest list, and while Natasha could undoubtedly break into his phone, she couldn’t quite work magic with it the way he could. Since he’d started tracking down Hydra-affiliated bank accounts and working on cutting into their finances where he could, Tony had come across Mr. Hannonson’s name many times, but had yet to figure out how exactly the wealthy uncle of a New Jersey Senator was hiding the outflow of cash from his accounts to Hydra’s.

Natasha’s dress looked lovely on her. Seeing something he made covering her skin, covering up all the little scars she hid and leaving only the image of the perfect femme fatale, made him feel like he was trusted. Not trusted enough to tell the truth to, of course - he knew she lied to him all the time, and she must be able to recognize his masks and quips and misdirections for what they were by now - but trusted enough to earn a place on her support team. 

He drifted about, talking to socialites and drawing out potential donors to various Stark Industries-backed charities, putting on a show of doing exactly what was expected of him. On his wrist, the special watch containing the emergency Iron Man gauntlet pulsed silently in morse code. Somewhere on the edge of the dance floor or beside the dessert tables, Natasha was fiddling with her ruby bracelet, sending him updates on the situation and occasionally asking him to engage someone in particular or move in one direction or another.

This little dance of theirs was so practiced and smooth after months of joint operations just like this that he had to remind himself to look at her every once in a while. It would make her job harder if he showed any discernible interest in her as more than an Avengers colleague, but it wouldn’t do to ignore her entirely either. But the looks were just for show. Both of them were liars in top form tonight, masks firmly in place and not an unwary word on their tongues. The true Natasha - the one who hid in the shadows until she was ready to strike, the one who sought out physical affection but was still uncomfortable with the closeness required, the one who had asked him not to go public with their relationship for the sake of her own paranoia - that Natasha was wrapped around wrist pulse point. 

How could they be so in sync without ever letting each other in? 

A hand descended on his shoulder. 

“It wouldn’t do for me to not dance even a single song with my partner for the night,” she stage whispered in his ear. Without even looking, he knew her eyes were not on him but on the men he’d been chatting with. Her words, the approach, the implication that they weren’t together but if they wanted her they’d have to come and get her, that was all for their benefit. Only the touch of her bare skin on his suit was aimed at him and him alone. 

“Of course, of course. Wouldn’t want anyone accusing me of neglecting my partner,” he said with a smile so plastic he could taste it. “Excuse me.”

The ballroom was like something out of the fairytales Tony used to sneak-read when he was younger and couldn’t check out Howard-approved science books from the library without getting and adult to give him a ride to said library. Jarvis used to sneak him the slim little books with a wink on the nights when Howard was too distracted to notice, which was often. When he was a little older and still new to playing host rather than adorable child accessory on the gala circuit, he used to pretend he was in a Camelot ballroom, or perhaps a party of wily, tricky fairies in the Realm of the Fey to make the night bearable. 

Ha.  _ Used to.  _

Natasha could easily pass for a dark, seductive sorceress from the north come to dance with King Arthur’s Court and work her magic on some hapless, magic-less man. He was all for color himself, bright golds and screaming reds all the way, but the contrast of black fabric on pale skin was certainly compelling. The little highlights of red lace like blood prints only enhanced the image. 

They danced with space between their bodies. Colleagues didn’t dance with their chests pressed together and foreheads touching in the chaste, don’t-feed-the-gossip-mill substitute for a kiss. But his hands rested on her hips and hers on his shoulders - how else could they properly dance?- and her clever hands told him everything he needed to know. 

“You dance so well, Tony, it’s like you know each note before it comes,” she said. Her lipstick red lips made each syllable mesmerizing (though not quite mesmerizing enough to distract him. Like everything else, those blood-red lips weren’t for him tonight.)

_ I got his phone, _ she tapped into the warm pocket where his neck met his shoulders.  _ After this song, take a look. Song after that I’ll sneak it back to him. _

“Well, they play a lot of the same music at these parties,” he replied too easily, like he was flirting by flaunting his social position. Like he thought that would be attractive to her. “It’s almost boring, you know? If one could call the biggest party in the city  _ boring.  _ If it weren’t for certain people,” he waggled his eyebrows comically at her, “I would be bored out of my mind after so much of the same old thing.”

_ Will do,  _ he squeezed into her waist. 

“Oh really? You do this that often? And here I thought our dances were something special." Her voice was light, teasing, but her hands squeezed his shoulders hard enough to bring him another inch closer to her. 

“Of course they are,” he said, “Any chance to dance with you is a pleasure.”

“Charmer,” she said through a seduction-slick mouth. 

He kept his smile fixed firmly in place through long years of practice, but he let himself squeeze her waist again. Let her interpret it as acknowledgement, silent laughter, or whatever she wanted. Whatever lie his hands could tell, he’d stick to. Anything that was less pathetic than  _ please don’t use your seduction mouth on me, I don’t need to be seduced. I’ll give up anything you want willingly, I’m not a mark. _

Except he had been a mark, once, hadn’t he? 

The strings rose in a not-quite-frantic flourish, and he whirled her around so her skirt flew around her legs like swirling ink. Distraction, misdirection. The Camelot Sorceress was back again, elegant and dangerous and easy to lie to because she already knew the truth. 

* * *

As soon as the song ended, Natasha slipped the phone into his pocket and pulled back.

“Thank you for the dance. I’ll let you get back to your duties.”

He fell into a over-the-top bow. 

“Of course, my lady. What kind of scoundrel would I be if I left neglected such a lady as yourself all night long?”

She grinned, then melted away into the crowd as seamlessly as she could. There were only about two minutes until the next dance, and by then she needed to return to Hannonson and distract him while Tony broke into his phone and cracked another Hydra asset wide open. 

Something had been off with him, towards the end. He hadn’t said anything untrue, definitely nothing more than what she said, but somehow she still felt like he’d shut her out there at the end. But for the life of her she couldn’t figure out why. All she’d done was smile. Smiles were supposed to draw people in and make them more comfortable.

* * *

Natasha leaned against him, and Tony was conflicted. The feel of her warm, lithe body against his side was  _ very _ nice, but there was an invitation there, and he was not sure he wanted to accept it. If it were an open invitation, that would be one thing, or so he told himself. But it wasn’t. It was all sultry, dark chocolate tones and feather-light fingers brushing his chest, tantalizingly close to the buttons and clasps that would make the suit slip off his shoulders and pool on the floor. It was a seduction, and not even an original one at that. He had seen her use those same fingers and that same voice on scores of shady businessmen, Hydra agents, and dangerous but distractible targets. It left a bitter taste in his mouth to draw any similarities between their relationship and her less savory missions.

He hugged her tight against his side, soaking up the warmth from her body, but did not reach for the straps of her dress the way her carefully angled shoulders suggested he could. 

She stayed with him in the elevator, and didn’t press the button to take her to her own floor. Tony considered pushing it for her, but in the end he just let his hand fall back to his side. He didn’t want to be alone tonight. 

“Did you enjoy yourself?” he asked, purposefully letting his voice slur a little, no more than could be explained by sleepiness. Except that he was never sleepy this early in the evening. 

Natasha smiled at him. 

“Of course. I always enjoy dancing with powerful men I’ve got wrapped around my finger.” She winked at him. “And Hannonson was actually a good dancer, for all that he was terrible at everything else. He didn’t even notice his phone was missing from his pocket until three dances later, and finding it in his jacket pocket didn’t make him at all suspicious. It was almost too easy.”

Tony smiled back at her, but inside he squirmed at being included by implication in the same category as Hannonson. 

“Better too easy than too hard,” he slurred, just to keep the conversation from falling to silence. Natasha was already well-attuned to his myriad of character flaws, he didn’t need her suspecting him of ones he didn’t have. He couldn’t count the number of dates who’d taken silence after a flirty remark as jealousy. 

The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. He stumbled a little as he pulled her into the penthouse, and for the first time that night she dropped her come-hither look. 

“Are you okay, Tony? How much did you drink tonight?”

She knew he’d cut back since they started dating, and she knew he didn’t hover near the alcohol even when she was dancing with someone else. 

“Maybe more than I should have,” he lied anyway. 

He felt her retreat. A slight distance opened between their torsos, and her arms twisted until she was supporting him rather than leaning on him. 

“In that case, let’s get you to bed.” She paused for a few footsteps. “You know, if you’d controlled yourself a little better, we could have ended the night on a high note.”

“How is falling into the softest bed in the world with my girlfriend and going to sleep after a long day not ending on a high note?” 

She fake shoved him, and he leaned overly dramatically on her, like a fainting damsel, and just like that the invitation was gone from her body. 

* * *

Tony’s bed was perfectly set up for falling into. It was wide, easily wide enough for four people to lie comfortably together. The mattress was gave under their weight like spongy forest moss, and the sheets were the sort of high quality she’d been trained to notice. Pillows formed a haphazard barricade against the headboard.

She stretched out like a sprawling cat and ran her fingers down Tony’s face. His eyes were bright and kind and way too focused for someone who had had too much alcohol. It niggled at her that she didn’t know why he’d lied, but it was easy enough to put it aside when he looked at her like that. Whatever his reasons, it wasn’t because he had grown bored of her, or because he’d spied some remnant of the Red Room in her soul and wanted to back away from it. 

He reached out and pulled her against his chest. The arc reactor whirred beneath her chin, hard and vulnerable. 

“So, the dress. Any issues? I know you didn’t really get a chance to test it in a fight or anything, but still. Every new test yields data.”

Of course he was concerned about the dress. It was his way of trying to protect her without implying that she might need protection.

“No problems. Stark engineering strikes again.” 

“Good to hear.”

His chest was warm, and against her will she thought of how warm Steve’s chest was when she stopped dead in surprise at the sight of the Winter Soldier in his cryo unit and he walked right into her back. Warmth behind her and ice ahead of her. She shivered. 

“Hey, do you need some more blankets? Here, give me a second, there’s some in the closet-“

She reached out and grabbed his arm, pulling him back into bed with a soft  _ thump. _

“No, it’s fine. I just… remembered something.”

He didn’t push, didn’t even ask if she wanted to talk about it, but his eyes betrayed his curiosity. It was unlike him - when they’d first gotten together, he’d asked about every little thing that came up, sometimes as part of a joke or offhand quip, but always seriously. Perhaps he had finally learned that he was a fool to expect anything like honesty from her. 

The thought burned her like a bullet passing too close to her skin.

There was a certain kind of shame in knowing that she had to lie to keep her relationship on its feet. Even though she had good reasons, even though he obviously knew when she was lying, even though he lied to her every single day about something or other. Their daily routine was a parade of lies and shared silences. Parts of her whispered  _ it’s the Red Room, it’s the way they made you, you’ll never have one of those trusting, intimate relationships where partners don’t lie to each other every other breath because your entire personhood is a lie. You can’t have a relationship with a weapon, after all.  _ Other parts disagreed, saying  _ you unlearned all the rest, you could unlearn this too. You just won’t because you’re a liar at heart.  _

Her face felt too warm pushed up against Tony’s chest, but she didn’t move away. It wouldn’t do for him to see her face if her uncertainty and shame were written there. 

_ But why? Isn’t he supposed to be your chosen partner? If there was one person in the world who you could let see, wouldn’t it be him? _

One of his hands stroked up and down her back, tracing her spine from just below her neck all the way down to her hips and then trailing back up again. It was supposed to be comforting, but it reminded her of the way the Hydra bodies looked when they found the abandoned Alaskan base. Bucky was already in the wind again when they arrived, but he’d left gruesome proof of his presence. The Hydra goons lay as though they had fled and marks in the distinctive shape of the metal hand covered their backs. Steve hadn’t spared a moment for that horror - some of the Winter Soldier maintenance equipment had held all of his attention - but the image had stayed with her. The man they hunted was one part Steve’s friend, vulnerable victim running in terror, and one part killer. 

She’d asked Steve if he’d told Tony about the notes they found, about the mission report dating to December 16, 1991. He’d said no, that there hadn’t been time to really sit down with Tony the way such news required and that he feared Tony would fly into a rage and chase down Bucky himself, looking for vengeance. All good reasons, all reasons she’d agreed with. 

They sounded so pathetic to her ears now, with his chest against her face and one of his legs between hers. 

“Hey Tony,” she started, then stopped. She knew how to prepare someone for bad news, how to shape their response to her liking, but the thought of actually using those techniques made her feel dirty. Shame at her secret-keeping was what pushed her forward, not a mission or a calculated reveal. Tony deserved better than to be treated like a mission. 

“Hmm, yes dear?” he mumbled into her hair. 

“How drunk are you, really?” He tensed. “Because I have something to tell you. Something I should have told you earlier. I thought it would be better left a secret, but it’s getting harder and harder to convince myself of that.”

“What kind of secret are we talking here? National security? Steve’s underwear brand? How exactly Fury came upon his perfect pirate cosplay opportunity?” 

“Not quite.” Her tongue felt like a heavy stone. “How much do you know about what happened to Bucky Barnes?”

Tony paused. If she looked up, she was sure she’d see him trying to piece together how Bucky Barnes fit together with some nefarious secret rather than actually trying to recall what he knew about the Winter Soldier situation. He always had to think just a few steps ahead. Too bad his mind for conversation wasn’t as good as his mind for science. If it was, perhaps he’d have figured it out already, and she wouldn’t have to tell him. Or perhaps he’d know she was going to say something that would ruin the peace and warmth of their evening in bed and would twist out of the way of her confession, forcing her to leave it for another day. 

“I know he was Cap’s best friend,” he said slowly. “That he was brainwashed or mind controlled or whatever it is we’re calling it, that he was in and out of cryo between assassinations, and that he has a metal arm that I’m really hoping he’ll let me take a look at once you, Sam and Steve manage to drag him back to civilization. Some of the files make it clear that some pretty nasty shit went down involving him at various bases, but nothing in detail. You guys only send me the tech-related files or things that need decryption, so you’re probably working with more info that I am in that regard.”

“There’s something else you need to know,” she forced out. 

His hands tightened a little on her back. 

“And what would that be?”

“Howard was one of his targets.”

There are more words, more things to say, conclusions he shouldn’t have to come to on his own, but the urge to shroud the truth in misdirection and half-lies is so strong that she shuts her mouth. Heaven help her if she lies now, when she’s just managed to bring a little truth to their relationship. 

His hands clutched desperately at her back, then flew to her shoulders as if to push her away, then slid back down and pulled her even closer. She could feel them shaking. 

“So you’re saying it wasn’t a car accident?”

“The Winter Soldier killed Howard as per orders, then took out Maria as a witness. He then stole several vials of experimental Super Serum from the car and fled the scene before anyone else arrived.”

He was quiet for a long time. 

“You found this in one of their files?” he finally asked. His voice was exhausted, like it took every bit of energy left in him to get the words to sound coherent. 

“Yes. At first we weren’t entirely sure what was real and what was lies meant to torture and confuse Barnes, but after a little investigation we were able to verify everything.”

His heart fluttered under her cheek like a hummingbird. Or perhaps that was just the sound of the arc reactor, and his heart was hiding behind it.

“It wasn’t - it wasn’t in any of the data dumps, was it?” His voice trembled like a drop of dew about to plummet to the ground. 

“Not the actual details, no. There were some mentions of things that might have been a reference to it, but nothing concrete or obvious enough to lead anyone to the right conclusions.”

“That’s, that’s good. That’s good, right? Wouldn’t want any of the sharks to get a whiff of this,” he muttered. 

Cautiously, she pulled her face away from the safety of his chest, where he couldn’t see her expressions, and forced herself to meet his eyes. They were wide and open and flat the way panicking people’s eyes often were. There was probably a lie she could tell that would make that look go away, but even this little honesty had left her too raw for that. The lie would feel like salt in her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Tony. I know this is going to be rough for you, and that you’re probably going to need to disappear into the workshop for a while tomorrow, but  _ please. _ Don’t let it consume you. Grieve for them, get mad, sad, confused, vindictive, feel whatever you want to feel, just don’t do what you did with the palladium poisoning.” She reached up and cupped his cheek. “I’ll be here for you.”

“Like you were during ‘what I did with the palladium poisoning?’”

She winced. 

“Not like that. I wasn’t on your side back then. I am now.”

He stared at her with wide, shiny eyes. Little by little, warmth and depth started to return to his gaze as the panic cleared away. Seconds passed into minutes, but she didn’t dare break his stare. Whatever it was he was doing to calm himself down, she wasn’t going to interrupt it. 

“No lie?” he asked at last. 

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Well, I’d hate to see my girlfriend die, so I guess I’ll believe you.” 

The words were joking, but underneath them she could hear carefully leashed grief. She didn’t prod. Instead, she snuggled up against him again, letting his hands move over her and alternately clutched and loosened until at last he fell asleep with one hand on the back of her neck and the other resting on her hip. They were still for now, but she didn’t expect them to stay that way. His hands always warned her when nightmares plagued him, and tonight was bound to be rough.

Just before she drifted off to join Tony in a light doze, the thought crossed her mind that tonight had been like lancing a wound. Painful, but the first necessary step to healing something gone on to fester. 

Perhaps she’d tell him another truth in the morning. 


End file.
